only an hour into walking around Vienna and already feeling like this trip is going to be an all-timer in terms of great lettering and fonts on buildings and signage

GC solicitation slipped another 10 months from the last schedule update The real issue will become obvious when they get bids - costs have increased substantially since the announcement of the old $92 million estimate getting ‘fully funded’ www.hillrag.com/2025/09/23/1...

"For me, the way that I became a local is that I first became a regular." sf.eater.com/dining-out/2...

contemporary restaurant service approach to place setting and clearing has completely destroyed the trope of the character who’s unsure of which utensil to use

in 1995 as part of my high school AP Journalism class I presented on how the internet was the future of journalism at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference - it was NOT a good presentation and I was not a savant and yet i still beat the NYT to setting up a website by a year

my most pedantic annual take is that DC shouldn’t call it Art All Night when it ends at 3am… please just sponsor a couple places to say open until daybreak!

how far we’ve fallen

a new restaurant we designed in Providence - Claudine, just 26 seats in a cloistered dining room, with a lighting approach that emphasizes coves and soft washes www.rimonthly.com/claudine/

amenity spaces we designed for a new apartment building in DC, Novel 14th Street - lots of warmth and texture to offset some low ceiling clearances

new multifamily amenity spaces we designed at The Wendy in Arlington VA - high contrast light and dark spaces in a neutral palette taking advantage of great window lines

amenity spaces we designed for a new apartment building in DC, Novel 14th Street - lots of warmth and texture to offset some low ceiling clearances

food and beverages with a logo are currently the leading indicator of a subpar dining experience

happy 90125 day

just as the prophesy foretold

Metro was designed by Harry Weese with a warm material palette: terra cotta, granite, bronze and concrete. Metro used brown paint for the original 1000-series trains because brown is good for concealing rust, but it also because brown fits the color temperature of the system.

This story has everything: #earlymodern 17th century art, discussions of femininity, arguments about restoration, cultural Catholics vs practicing Catholics, fake eyelashes. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/w...

this aesthetic probably hit peak zeitgeist with the Ace Hotel NYC lobby (Roman & Williams, 2009) - big American flag, vintage chesterfield sofas, screw in bulb marquee letters, chalk art, oak schoolhouse chairs, wool blankets, stenciled lettering

Big deal real commercial estate people generally do not use social media in the way major players in media, tech, politics, and academia do. They network in person at conferences and have little to gain from internet clout.

crucial link to heritage craft on the left side of the chart with Taavo Somer, his Freemans (2004) and AvroKO’s Public (2003) as the LES establishments that shaped the next decade of aesthetics, call it deadstock design

one great season from Jayden Daniels will end up indirectly causing the District to fork out billions

speakeasy and listening room with stand up comedy and youth pastor energy

love to have a listening bar with a concrete floor (also the fast-evolving “listening room” category in the US seems to have settled at “it’s a restaurant that can have a DJ or a band”)

By far my most woo/crank belief is that exposure to blue-tinted light at night, both in your home and via ambient light pollution, literally and directly makes you sick

horseshoe theory is real

Lot of similarities between the growing appreciation for handsomely crafted 90's Hollywood cinema and the revival in appreciation for Yacht Rock

what a plan!

the rose window of Orvieto Cathedral, an strange 14th century 22 segment design by Orcagna with an array of solomonic columns suspended in the lattice, looking like a radial piston engine

Nearly 6 years since I started down a rabbit hole to find out who was Dan of Dan’s Cafe, my magnum opus (abridged) has now been published: washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7659...

now that fake flower walls are out the biggest red flag in a restaurant is their logo on an interior wall in halo-lit LED channel letters

I think the designer or owner decided the underside of the soffit should be painted to match sometime between the day and evening photo shoots (but where was the transition point?) la.eater.com/2025/6/6/244...

Christ Church Lutheran, Minneapolis Eliel Saarinen & Eero Saarinen 1949

these examples are just so TACKY

The remarkable Sixth Pantheon of Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires, designed by Ítala Fulvia Villa and Clorindo Testa and completed in 1958. A sprawling sunken brutalist necropolis, felt like the remnants of a civilization on an alien world. Photos from a 2023 visit.

Stopped by earlier in the night before friends joined me at Bar Betsie. This bar fuckin rocks. Union Market Area, from the Jane Jane folks

favorite design piece from the David Lynch auction www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/142...

nice Food & Wine piece on the stained glass revival, featuring the ceiling at our interiors for Your Only Friend www.foodandwine.com/stained-glas...

Combining northern acceptance of transit & urbanism with southern large geography governance is a secret sauce of the DMV's success. Turns out southern efficiency and northern charm are actually pretty potent together.

new GROSS / GREAT is up, featuring - the reactionary politics of Ratatouille - the crimes of nostalgia - bad cocktails enabled by fat washing open.substack.com/pub/grossgre...

Josef Albers-inspired plating on a dish from Mikasa’s Cheers line

my favorite DS+R building in a while, though it’s part of the typical architecture biennial “the world has problems and adventurous architecture is the solution” model www.dezeen.com/2025/05/08/t...

Gun Crazy, a 1950 pulp noir with a perfect final scene, directed by Joseph H Lewis

Neandertal Dark, 2018, sandalwood fading to amber with tobacco and seaweed, teetering between a balance of different notes each time I come back to it, appealingly impossible to pigeonhole

look there is a clearly a schism in the church between dogmatic and progressive DJs of the cloth (and, confusingly, progressive house is orthodox) english.elpais.com/culture/2023... www.theguardian.com/music/2023/n...

embarrassment of riches

uh contra Selldorf I think art historians place a lot of importance on contextualizing art in the space within which it’s viewed! www.dezeen.com/2025/05/06/a...

Expo ‘70 vs Expo 2025, both in Osaka, not sure of the pavilion planning guidelines but what a loss of architectural ambition and exuberance

just because induction burners are portable doesn't mean that they're exempt from hood ventilation requirements... if your restaurant is violating building code/health code don't talk to the NYT about it www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/d...

My heart is still beating so fast. Thank you @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social Thank you @bloomberg.com and especially the CityLab team @kristoncapps.bsky.social @nicflatow.bsky.social and David Dudley Stories here! www.bloomberg.com/features/des...

campari teenage riot